1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the wheel chairs and people that are unable to walk and are therefore confined to their wheel chairs. While a person may be capable of moving around their living quarters or work area on a wheel chair, they are unable to attain sufficient height to reach and work on counter tops, stove tops, cupboard shelves and work benches. The present invention has been found to be particularly useful for persons who are unable to support themselves on their legs or for persons who have no legs at all that must be elevated to standing heights. The present invention however is also useful to persons that are recovering from an illness or persons that are just too weak to stand for even short periods of time without risking a fall.
2. Description of Prior Art
The wheel chair is a useful and indispensable vehicle to move disabled persons from one location to another. Most people that are unable to walk or stand use a wheel chair during most of their waking hours. Today there are millions of wheel chairs in existence and in constant use.
Although a wheel chair is useful to persons that are unable to walk, it does have some limitations. One limitation to a wheel chair is that generally it has a low elevation or an elevation that allows a person to sit at a table while eating or to sit at a desk. The lower elevation does not give a person confined to a wheel chair the ability to work at a counter top, stove top, oven, work bench or reach a cupboard or a shelf.
In order to reach into a cupboard, a person in a wheel chair, must crawl out of the wheel chair, climb unto the counter top and reach into the cupboard; this is very dangerous and time consuming. If a person that is confined to a wheel chair must work on a counter or work bench, they must climb on to the counter or work bench and sit on the counter or work bench; this is also dangerous and it reduces the efficiency of the disabled person.
There are several types of elevating wheel chairs that have been developed in the past. One type of elevating wheel chair only elevates the seat part of the wheel chair. Another type of elevating wheel chair places disabled person into a standing position.
Two examples of the first type of wheel chair that elevates the seat and back rest of a wheel chair are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,882,949 issued to Anderson and U.S. Pat. No. 4,431,076 issued to Simpson. These wheel chairs elevate the disabled person but they do not stabilize the wheel chairs when they are elevated. When the wheel chair is elevated with the disabled person, the ability to balance the wheel chair is diminished and the hazard of falling over is increased.
The other type of elevating wheel chair is the type that allows the disabled person to be supported and held in a standing position. This type of elevating wheel chair is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,067,249 issued to Deucher; U.S. Pat. No. 4,076,304 issued to Deucher; U.S. Pat. No. 4,598,944 issued to Meyer and Nold. These wheel chairs place the disabled person in a standing position but they do not increase their balance and since they are elevated their balance is greatly decreased again causing a hazardous condition. This type of wheel chair is limited to dissabled persons that have the ability to support their body weight on their legs or spine and therefore cannot be used by many disabled persons.
Several other elevating wheel chair have been known and used before and are typical examples thereof are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 1,307,058 issued to McGrath; U.S. Pat. No. 2,374,182 issued to Duke; U.S. Pat. No. 2,459,066 issued to Duke; U.S. Pat. No. 2,530,544 issued to Schwantes; U.S. Pat. No. 2,546,765 issued to McKinley; U.S. Pat. No. 2,609,862 issued to Pratt; U.S. Pat. No. 2,792,052 issued to Johannesen; U.S. Pat. No. 2,866,495 issued to Diehl et al; U.S. Pat. No. 2,915,112 issued to Schwartz; U.S. Pat. No. 3,905,436 issued to Karchark Jr. et al; U.S. Pat. No. 3,937,519 issued to Schoolden; and U.S. Pat. No. 3,953,054 issued to Udden et al. None of these devices, however, teach the elevating of a wheel chair while increasing the stability of the wheel chair.